Every Monday it arrives in my e-mail box, from <associates@amazon.com>:
a report of how many people have clicked-through from my website
to Amazon
using links that I have provided, how many books (and what kind
of books) they have bought--and what my "referral fee"
is.

For a long time one of my back burners had held a plan to put
up a page of interesting
books that I had read and wished to recommend. I had always
found suggestions to guide my reading to be extremely valuable.
It seemed to me that people who liked to look at my web page might
like to see what I was reading--and liked.

The plan moved to a front burner when I realized that Amazon
was providing a way for me to make it incredibly easy for anyone
curious enough about what I was reading to get the books. One
click from my website to the book-description and book-order page
at Amazon
for anyone curious about Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian's Information
Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy; a second
click and (provided their credit card balance allows) the book
is on the way to their address.

I thought: This is exactly what the web is for--to greatly
speed and ease the flow of information. And I thought: I very
much want Jeff Bezos and company to succeed, and this is something
I can do to help them.

So that evening I dropped into Adobe Pagemill, and the next
day my interesting
books page was up on my website.

And the e-mails from <associates@amazon.com> began to
arrive, one a week, each week with a bottom line: 160 clicks-through
from my website to Amazon,
280 books examined, 13 books purchased, $18.16 credited to my
finder's fee account.

I thought: Hmmm... $20 a week. An initial time investment of
an hour making the interesting
books page, and maybe ten minutes a month maintaining and
adding to the page. Amortize the initial investment over two and
a half years, and find that... $90 for 12 minutes a month of work...
$450 an hour. $450 an hour? Wow!

But Brad...

Yes? Who are you?

You didn't earn that $450 an hour...

Yes I did. I'm a highly skilled information professional. In
fact, perhaps Jeff Bezos should be paying me more. Why, just down
the hall there are people who when they consult make...

Former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General for Antitrust
have highly specific and detailed knowledge of antitrust policy
that is of immense value to large corporations seeking to evade
trouble. Economic historians do not. If you ever change your field
to Industrial Organization, become a former Deputy Assistant Attorney
General for Antitrust, and if Jeff Bezos is ever the book-selling
monopoly king of America, then maybe--but I think not...

You are being paid that $450 an hour because you are selling
Jeff Bezos and company something that you don't own: you are selling
them the attention of people who come to your website...

But this is the "attention economy," after all. They
are paying me attention. They are paying me attention because
they think that I have something to say: I've worked hard to gain
their attention. Why can't I--while they're paying me attention--use
that attention to go and tell them to pay attention to Jeff Bezos
at Amazon?

They're paying you attention because they think that your
website will inform, entertain, and perhaps amuse them. But they
want your words that you put on your website because you thought
they were true--not words and links that you put on your website
because someone is paying you to do so. They think that they are
engaging in some sort of near-ideal speech situation with you.
They think you are attempting to inform them, not to manipulate
them into actions that will earn you money. That's why there's
this idea that "advertising" should be separated from
"editorial"...

But the links are not on my website because of the fees from
Amazon!
They're on my website because I liked the books! It's not like
I'm twisting what I say: there is a strict separation between
advertising and editorial in here. The direct link is just a convenience.
I'd recommend these books in this way even if Amazon
wasn't promising to send me a check every three months.

You would? You would have put a big link right smack in
the middle of your home
page?

From your home page? You certainly loved the book more than
many that have shown up there on your home page...

Well, no... But I can fix it. I can add value. I can add some
reviews. I can review a book-of-the-month. I can choose it because
it is genuinely interesting, not because I think that people who
shop at Amazon
are likely to buy it.

And if you spend three hours a month wrting up a review
of your book-of-the-month, that pushes your rewards down from
$450 an hour to $30 an hour, about what Jeff Bezos pays his senior
programmers...

$30 an hour is not bad at all, as long as you like the work.
Remember: I'm not into the world wide web for the money. I'm in
it because I want Amazon
to succeed, and I want to make the people who visit my web
page happy. I can (a) give people who pay attention to my interesting
books page some of my attention (b) in exchange for their
attention that (c) I am giving to Amazon.
See? It's a gift-exchange attention economy: I give them my attention,
they give me their attention, I give their attention to Jeff Bezos,
and Jeff Bezos gives me... money.

Yes, money. About that money. It isn't your money. Those
are Berkeley's electrons that are being served out over the net...

And then uploaded it to a server in the berkeley.edu domain.
Those are Berkeley's electrons that Jeff Bezos is paying for.
The money should go to the University of California at Berkeley.
Somewhere there is an Assistant to the Deputy Vice Chancellor
and Associate Senior Dean who is writing a formal, official, University
of California policy about the misuse of U.C. internet resources
for "commercial" purposes...

But professors earn outside money all the time! Book review
fees! Honoraria! Yes, these are honoraria. They aren't really
"commercial purposes." When you give a lecture and they
give you an honorarium, the honorarium isn't payment for giving
the lecture, it's a gift in appreciation of your intellectual
excellence.

Right...

Or, better yet, they are like frequent-flyer miles. Yes. Frequent-flyer
miles. If you fly on Berkeley's dime to a conference, you don't
have to give the frequent-flyer miles back to the University of
California...

You don't have to give the frequent-flyer miles back because
the airlines played a very clever political game in the way they
established frequent flyer programs. By making it next to impossible
for those who paid for tickets to figure out who got how many
frequent-flyer miles, they managed to make them the traveller's
property. But frequent-flyer miles are still a kickback: still
an incentive for the traveller to waste his employer's money by
flying on one particular airline. You are making your moral case
weaker by bringing up frequent-flyer miles...

Ka-ching!

From April 1st, 1998 to June 30th, 1998 Individually Linked Books that, on the date of order, are listed in our catalog at 10% to 30% off the publisher's list price and that are added to the customer's shopping basket directly from the page that results from following the hypertext link to the Individually Linked Book ASIN Title Amount ---- ----- ------ 0201696487 JavaScript for the World Wide Web: Vi 14.36 0262611341 The Age of Diminished Expectations 11.16 038073155X The First $20 Million is Always the H 5.59 0385319207 One True Thing 9.56 0393040178 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations : W 147.00

But I spend my money on things Berkeley should pay for all
the time! Support is lousy, lousy! We haven't had a reliable working
xerox machine in the Economics Department for eight months! Last
week I bought lunch for nine graduate students!

[Fade out]

No University of California at Berkeley electrons were used
in the creation of this piece (although some may have been used
in its transmission). Excerpts from e-mails from associates@amazon.com
are genuine, although amazon.com has not yet figured out a way
to make your computer sound like a cash register when you open
an e-mail from associates@amazon.com.

The author, however, denies that the thoughts expressed
in the piece above are an accurate record of his thoughts, the
thoughts of any sub-component of his brain, or the thoughts of
any other brain or sub-component. The possibly fictitious thoughts
expressed above are intended merely to amuse, entertain, and--maybe--inform.

By the way, if you were amused, entertained, or informed
by the piece above, would you please do me a favor? It won't cost
you anything, I promise. The next time you want to buy a book,
go to http://www.amazon.com/,
and at the point when you get to the individual book page look
up at the top of your browser. In the URL box you will see something
like: